Abstract

To the editor: The recent article by Dobkin and associates (1) emphasizes that antibiotic treatment alone is often successful in the treatment of arteriovenous fistula infections. They also mentioned that bovine heterograft arteriovenous fistulas more often lead to sepsis than did brescia arteriovenous fistulas. Most infections were due to staphylococci, and 25% were due to Gram-negative bacilli. Our recent experience suggests another type of infection can occur chronically in a clotted bovine heterograft fistula (2). Our patients who had clotted bovine fistulas had unsuccessful attempts at surgical declotting. After this operative declotting maneuver the patients developed chronic draining infections generally